Liberal Talk Radio

I don’t know which is worse, that Michael Jackson had a one-night stand with a woman or that the lyrics to “Billie Jean” have now suddenly come into focus for me 25 years later:
Michael Jackson’s father insisted Thursday night that a Norwegian dancer is in fact the King of Pop’s love child.
“Yes, I knew he [...]

The White House takes on the Birthers directly:
Attempting to put the issue to rest, once more, [White House Press Secretary Robert] Gibbs assured reporters: “The president was born in Honolulu, in the 50th state of the greatest country on the face of the earth…There are 10,000 more important issues for people in this country to [...]

Health care reform 101, the so-called “birthers,” and finally, the F-22 goes down.
Links Mentioned: Longman on Health IT … Birthers gone mad … Health Care 101.

I have to sympathize with “dudeman” at CHS on the inanity of a plastic bag tax. To be clear, he’s talking about a fee that Madison Market in Seattle charges its customers, but it’s clearly related to the 20 cent fee that the Seattle City Council is proposing for all plastic bags.
The sad [...]

This is a couple of weeks old, but it’s nice to see The New Republic call BS on local Seattle curmudgeon (and Crosscut contributor) Ted Van Dyk. Van Dyk uses is bona fides as having been a Democrat 40 years ago to slag on Dems at every opportunity. As TNR points out, it’s [...]

Phillip Longman’s article in the Washington Monthly on the promise and perils of health IT is worth a read. It’s shocking how few medical records are electronic in the year 2009 (less than 2%, I believe).
Longman, though, is a bit too bullish on VistA, the open-source EMR software used by the Veterans’ [...]

The bloated, over-budget plane that the Air Force doesn’t even want is finally getting de-funded. For a while, it looked like congress was going to build them anyway, but now even pork-meister Jack Murtha has given up the fight.
This is a huge deal. Yes, the F-22 was on its last legs, [...]

Confidential to the Seattle Times: I think your headline writer misspelled “Disorganized Rabble.” Keep up the fight, though.

Okay, so maybe I’m the last one to hear about this (and it wouldn’t be the first time), but I caught some of Rachel Maddow’s show last night and found myself terrified by a video of a “birther” hijacking a GOP town hall meeting.  (Not the same video, ’cause I’m lazy, but here’s an earlier [...]

First rule — keep baby-killing philosopher/utilitarian ethicist/professor Peter Singer way the hell away from “rationing” arguments. You’d think the Republicans were behind this one . . .